1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to transient protection circuits. More particularly, it relates to a method of protecting integrated circuits from transients.
2. Discussion
The automotive industry uses a communication protocol in its automobiles called class II. Class II is a single wire vehicle communication network, which is a variant of the SAE J1850 standard. The various class II integrated circuits are all powered by battery potential and have a pin bus that communicates to the other electronic modules in the vehicles that utilize class II communication. Previous designs have used a dual diode transient protection circuit to protect integrated circuits from negative transients. Unfortunately, a negative transient can cause the bus to lock up when an open ground fault occurs.